The Return of the Native eBook

When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring
van, ordinary in shape, but singular in colour, this
being a lurid red. The driver walked beside it;
and, like his van, he was completely red. One
dye of that tincture covered his clothes, the cap
upon his head, his boots, his face, and his hands.
He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it
permeated him.

The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller
with the cart was a reddleman—­a person
whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding
for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly
becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in
the rural world the place which, during the last century,
the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He
is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link
between obsolete forms of life and those which generally
prevail.

The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside
his fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening.
The reddleman turned his head, and replied in sad
and occupied tones. He was young, and his face,
if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome
that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that
it really was so in its natural colour. His eye,
which glared so strangely through his stain, was in
itself attractive—­keen as that of a bird
of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He had neither
whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves
of the lower part of his face to be apparent.
His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed
by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners
now and then. He was clothed throughout in a
tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality,
not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but
deprived of its original colour by his trade.
It showed to advantage the good shape of his figure.
A certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that
he was not poor for his degree. The natural query
of an observer would have been, Why should such a
promising being as this have hidden his prepossessing
exterior by adopting that singular occupation?

After replying to the old man’s greeting he
showed no inclination to continue in talk, although
they still walked side by side, for the elder traveller
seemed to desire company. There were no sounds
but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny
herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread
of the men, and the footsteps of the two shaggy ponies
which drew the van. They were small, hardy animals,
of a breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known
as “heath-croppers” here.

Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman
occasionally left his companion’s side, and,
stepping behind the van, looked into its interior
through a small window. The look was always anxious.
He would then return to the old man, who made another
remark about the state of the country and so on, to
which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and
then again they would lapse into silence. The
silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness;
in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting,
frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity
amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than
in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on
the merest inclination, and where not to put an end
to it is intercourse in itself.